Memento Mori
by SkitzySyko
Summary: A look into our favourite badass redneck, Daryl Dixon, as a person that mentions everything from Sophia to Merle as an hallucination to what makes him a badass. M for language.


**About this story:** While working on writing my other Walking Dead FF, Gospel of Charlaine, I had to hijack Daryl's mind for a bit and I think I did that a little bit too well, because I created this. We all see Daryl a certain way - Badass - but I truly feel that what happened with Sophia was _HUGE_ for him and I had to write this stand-alone piece that also doubles as a sort-of a companion piece with my other story, but mostly this is just the byproduct of hijacking Daryl's mindset while listening to a lot of _Black Rebel Motorcycle Club_, _Disturbed,_ and _The Dropkick Murphy's. _A few parallels will be apparent between how I described Daryl and one of the main characters from G.o.C, and yes - that is intentional.

This is a look into Daryl as a person, that brings into play Sophia's death, Merle as an hallucination, and what makes him a badass.

Enjoy;)

Songs for your consideration: B.R.M.C.'s _Berlin, __Beat the Devil's Tattoo, _and _Ain't No Easy Way._ Disturbed's _Warrior _and _Inside the Fire, _Static-X's _I Am._

* * *

><p><span>Memento Mori<span> – The Latin phrase meaning '_Remember Your Mortality' _or _'Remember You Will Die'._

A Roman general parades all through his great cities many streets during a victory triumph. Great applause and praise is given to the General from a large crowd but standing behind him walks a slave, tasked with constantly whispering in the General's ear, "_Memento Mori."_, constantly reminding the great General to remember his mortality – remember that he is just a man, mortal like any other. Reminding the General that although his peak is today, tomorrow he could fall, or –more likely- be brought down.

* * *

><p>Daryl has always been a fighter, a survivor; a true-blooded Irish-American redneck with more explosive volatility inside of him than he knows what to do with. Partially the result of his childhood, a left over necessity of survival, is a ferociously ever-antagonized bark that leaves him impervious to all of life's curious crescendos and tumultuous troughs. He lacks care and most concern, finding apathy easier than actually dealing with anything.<p>

Instead, he just gets angry. Along with hungry and horny, angry is also one of his staple emotions, a practical pinnacle of his personality that violently erupts, usually with a sort of physical manifestation. But that anger – that instantaneous burst of rage, it comes and then it goes, and that is it. He doesn't have to deal with any pesky emotions beyond that.

It worked for him as a kid, dealing with his abusively alcoholic father and chronically absent older brother. Shit happened and he just pushed on through it, relying only on himself and not resting long enough to let things bother him. He blocked out the world and waded through the muck, not letting anything tear under his protective bark to his raw insides; keeping both walkers and emotions, save wrath, at bay.

He likes it that way, though. Because for as crazy as he knows he is, everyone else is more crazy. They go around, pondering suicide as a routine with their breakfast like a fucking cup of coffee – wondering if dealing with what remains of life is really worth it.

To Daryl, survival is paramount – suicide is an enigma he simply cannot mentally grasp. Survival is all he knows how to do. It has always been one frequency he remains tuned to, the main goal of his life through thick and thin.

_Just survive._

It's like his holy fucking mantra. _Oh holy father who art it heaven, I just want to fucking survive._

Daryl was trained for this, this hellish reality so deeply infested by walkers – he has a confidence unmatched by anyone thus far. A defiance to be shaken by the world, a strict akimbo policy regarding life. Throw a walker in front of him, he can kill it no problem; If he gets shot, _in the fucking head,_ he will survive; if he gets shot, _with his own arrow_, he will rip it out of his side and use it to nail a walker through their rotting nasty-ass smelling cranium. You can always count on Daryl to do what is necessary.

You can always count on him to make it through the muck.

So, while everyone else spends all their time worrying and cowering in fear – barley scraping by, Daryl will be out in the forest – kicking some living dead ass and _not _taking names and then when he gets home, he will clean off his arrows and eat his dinner and sleep in fucking peace. Whenever someone wallows over their own misery, bitching about the loss of their loved ones he wants to scream, he wants to scream in their dirty tear-stained faces and say

"Everyone has lost someone! Get the fuck over it, because you are no more special than anyone else."

He has yelled it multiple times at trees in the woods or dead things but never dared actually vocalize his mentality because somewhere deep inside of himself, in a closeted portion of his mind that he pretends doesn't exist, a portion of him Merle constantly harasses him over, Daryl actually does care. Not a lot, or anything… It is not like he cries, he is just not a total douchebag or anything.

Daryl accepts how omnipresent death, despair and loss have become. He accepted it after a prolonged rage and then _moved on._ He accepted the loss of his brother. He accepted and moved on – he survived. So in that regard, for how crazy he is, Daryl is the sanest person he knows; Daryl is the person best suited for this new fucked-up universe.

And as far as he is concerned, Daryl was a stone fucking wall.

Until Sophia happened.

He _had _a daughter, once upon a time. She was only alive for three minutes and never even had a name…. Her mother was this stupid meth junkie Daryl had hooked up with one night. The kid never really had a chance in the world to live, and Daryl accepted that… Besides, the mother – Beth, he _thinks_ –did not want anything to do with him. Daryl was not even there for the delivery but he still had a daughter. He had a little baby girl for three minutes before her one-pound body went limp.

He wasn't there for the delivery, but he secretly saw the baby later that night in the cold basement morgue.

Whenever Merle pops up as his own Jiminy Cricket, he likes to taunt him about how Daryl cried looking at her pale blue-lipped body that could practically fit in the palm of his hand.

_Merle, you're a souless evil prick._

When Sophia went missing, it got to him. The circumstance dug its way under his bark – and he was so confident that he would find her. Because he knew that if anyone would be able to find her, it would be him.

So he never gave up. He kept pushing on and wading through the putrid swamp of bullshit that life has become, focused on surviving and finding Sophia.

He never lost hope, his confidence never once faltering.

_I can find her. I can save her. I know I can!_

…. _I have to._

He did not save baby Rose, as he has recently decided to name his deceased daughter, and he did not have the power to. But he has the power to save that innocent little blonde girl who Daryl can empathize with.

His father was Carol's late husband, only about fifty times worse. A horrible, horrible man, Daryl refuses to even think about him.

So here was this little girl, lost in the woods with no one else capable enough to find her and save her, and Daryl accepted it as his mission to do so.

And then when they finally did find Sophia….

Staring down the sights of his rifle, he stared at pale and blue-lipped Sophia with cloudy eyes and blood on her shirt, he was left awe-struck. It was like something quite literally shattered, a little piece of his bitter bark and steely emotions shattered.

He saw Carol begin to run and with a blink of his eyes, he wrapped his arms around the thin wailing mother – stopping her from running right for undead little Sophia... stopping Carol's suicidal desire to hug her child.

He clutched to the crying woman and watched with a distant way to his blue eyes as Rick shot Sophia in the head. The only other man who shares a comparable spirit of survivability and fight, Rick then looks over his shoulder to Daryl and the two share a brief look before Rick walks away.

Daryl may be willing to kill anything without so much as blinking, but Sophia is not one person he could kill. Daryl is always the one to step up and take care of the things no one else wants to. Gutting a walker, jamming a pick-axe through the skulls of their friends – he can do it.

But killing Sophia he could not do, so Rick did. And with that one look they shared, Daryl spoke a soliloquy of deep gratitude and the ex-Sheriff understood, then walked off.

Daryl was built for this hellish world. He is a fighter by nature and a skilled survivor by circumstance; he is quick to anger yet unwilling to wallow; he is a dauntless man amidst daunting times, refusing to be worn-down by life; his name is Daryl Dixon and he is the sanest person he knows.

From within his own mind, or just behind him and to the left – he can't distinguish anymore, not really anyway – Merle's gravely chuckle echoes in his own mind.

"_You're a fuckin' candy-ass fag… Just tryin' not to cry over some dead girl, boo-fuckin'-hoo," a sarcastic scoff, "You think you're such a fuckin badass, well guess what little brother – you're pathetic. You're a useless sack of shit, just like you always been."_

Daryl looks behind him, glaring at a cruel older brother who isn't there.

His dead older brother may be his very own Jiminy Cricket but Daryl is still the sanest person he knows.

Daryl does not begin to question his strategic coping strategies and defenses, as well as his sanity, until he has been looking at Sophia's body for three minutes, listening to Carol sob and feeling her shake in his arms the entire time. It is until then that he cries for the second time in his life.

It isn't until then that he for the first time questions the value of living if everything around you is death.

So here Daryl is left, his muscular arms cradling Carol while he shoulder digs into his fresh stab wound, allowing the intensely sharp pain to stop the anger as well as stop the sudden rush of despair catching him off-guard like a sucker punch.

Here Daryl sits, at a loss for words and an overwhelming desire to get shit-faced with his fresh injury hurting so bad his jaw is close to crumbling from how hard he has it clamped, realizing that he is not nearly as fit for this world as he once thought.

Merle kneels down beside Daryl, a cold sneer in his upper lip as he leans in closer towards his younger brother, whispering _You ain't cut out for shit, _and then just like Rick had wondered of into oblivion, so does Merle - receeding back into Daryl's subconscious.

Here Daryl sits, realizing he isn't nearly as sane as he once thought, accepting the reality for what it is but not knowing how this time he will push on through the muck.

_Fuck this._

* * *

><p>Please review, any and all commentsconstructive criticism are welcome.


End file.
